


A Proper Burial

by Rhinozilla



Category: The Walking Dead
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-27 00:17:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7595863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhinozilla/pseuds/Rhinozilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl makes sure Lori is put to rest properly. Set sometime after “Say the Word” but before “Hounded.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Proper Burial

They barely got Rick out of the boiler room the first time. There was no way they were letting him back in there for this. The hallways leading from the cellblock to the boiler room were a maze of blood and dismembered corpses. Daryl could see sprays of red on the walls where the swing of Rick’s ax had let the blood fly from the walkers. The stench was nauseating, but it wasn’t the main reason why Daryl felt like he was going to puke.

They’d found T-Dog where he died: torn apart and only recognizable because the geeks hadn’t gotten to his face. Glenn had put a knife in his skull. Maggie and Beth had buried him a few hours ago. Hershel had coaxed Rick away from that damned phone long enough to take a bath and eat solid food, so Daryl had taken the opportunity to do…this.

He stepped down the stairs into the room where Lori Grimes died. His eyes forcibly kept themselves away from the splash of dark blood in the center of the room, instead spotting her pants and shoes, where Maggie had had to wrestle them off in a hurry. The concrete floor above the bloody swath in the middle of the room had a chunk missing from a crack where Carl’s bullet had pushed through and ended it.

The room was silent as a grave, but it was important that it not be a grave. Someone had died here, but she wasn’t going to remain here. He drew a steadying breath, quieting the echoes of Carl’s pleading and Maggie’s horrified apologies as he fought his mind’s involuntary and unbidden reimagining of what had transpired there.

Daryl slowly followed the bloody drag marks into the other half of the room. He saw the bloated walker that had ripped into his friend; its torso and jaw were mutilated where Rick had carved at it in his rage and grief. Daryl’s legs froze there, not letting him go any nearer. A draft prickled across his skin, and his hand twitched around the knife that he’d brought with him…just in case.

There was nothing to kill down here, though. Everything was dead and not getting up again. Rick had made sure of that. Exhaling slowly, he shook the tremble from his knife hand and stepped over the bloated walker, rounding the corner where the blood trail ended.

The bottom fell out of his stomach and he grabbed at the wall to steady himself, realizing how little he had truly been prepared for this.

“Jesus.” He turned away with a cringe.

There wasn’t much left of Lori Grimes. The bloody collection in front of him was mostly bones and hair and just enough of her clothes and skin for him to be sure that it was her. That fierce woman, who had put him in his place on a number of occasions, who endured a whole winter being treated like a stranger by her husband and son, who had gone through this entire pregnancy—not that he knew what that was like, but Carol had told him horror stories—during arguably the worst period of human history…and never let on how scared she had to have been.

This was all that was left of her now.

“Fucking…” He doubled over and grabbed his knees, but nothing came up.

For a long moment, he just stayed in that position, breathing carefully and with eyes squinted shut. All that life, all that strength, all that love and pain and beauty: she was just gone.

He finally straightened and looked at the object in his other hand…a canvas laundry bag from the prison’s utility room. That was it; that was all he had to move her with. Disgust bubbled up in his chest, only eclipsed by the horror that the bag was really too big considering how much of her remains were left.

There was no way one walker could devour another human body completely, but that fucker behind him had given its best shot, and maybe a few of its buddies had come along and then moved on. Either way, they couldn’t leave her down here like this. Not one of their own. Not Carl’s and Lil Asskicker’s mom. Not Lori.

He moved most of the bones without incident, but his breakfast finally came up when he started moving the rest of her remains. He emptied his stomach in the corner, spitting bile before returning to the task at hand.

Lori deserved to be buried outside, in the Earth, where sunlight would touch her headstone and grass could grow over the grave, not in some rancid, blood soaked room. They all knew that, but Rick had spent all night down here with her remains; no way they were losing him down here again. Daryl finished carefully moving her into the bag, the bottom of which was staining red, and slowly stepped back into the main area of the room. He took her pants and boots but didn’t shove them into the bag. He carried them under his arm as he carried the bag in front of him, carefully picking his path through the prison so that he exited outside the farthest from where the others were.

They didn’t need to see this part. Not Carl or Rick or Maggie or any of them. Let them pay respect to her when she was in the ground, with dignity and without all the shit that life had thrown at her over the past year. They would put her to rest, properly, and hopefully she’d find peace…wherever she was now.

Axel was finishing up the third grave—Carol’s grave—when Daryl made his way over with the bag. The other man’s eyes widened as he registered the bundle and what it had to be, who it had to contain.

“Oh man,” he bumbled under his breath, stepping out of the half-finished grave as Daryl neared. “Is that—“

“Lori,” Daryl informed him. “Her name was Lori Grimes.”

“The one with the baby?”

Daryl glared at him, and the man shrunk. Daryl looked away and gently lowered the bag into the grave.

“She never got to meet her baby,” he grunted.

“M’sorry. Meant no disrespect…Don’t nobody deserve what happened to—to your friends, Lori and Carol and T-Dog.”

Daryl made sure the remains were settled in the grave, sickened by how little space they took up in the human-sized hole, and stepped away from it. His hands were bloody, and he stared at his palms idly. Axel dropped his shovel and rummaged through his pockets, producing a blue handkerchief.

“Here,” he offered, stretching as far as he could without actually taking a step closer.

Daryl eyed him warily but then took the offering and scrubbed at the blood.

Two down, one to go. Lori and T-Dog could be put to rest properly, but Carol was still in there…somewhere. His chest felt like it was full of ice, and he swallowed hard. He had to go back in there. Carol deserved to be buried right, like a human, not left in a tomb to rot as a walk—

“Who was she?” Axel asked.

Daryl blinked out of his thoughts, grateful for that interruption. “What?”

Axel tilted his hand toward the bag in the grave. “Lori. I mean…I know that she had a baby and she was Rick…Rick’s?…wife. But who was she?”

Daryl stilled, looking slowly from Axel to the body in the grave. He heaved a sigh, glanced back at the yard where Glenn and Maggie were getting ready to go on a run, and back to the sight before him.

“She was our First Lady.”


End file.
